Heads Up, NYC, SF, Chicago: Something Wi-Fi This Way Comes

For denizens of the Big Apple, San Francisco and the other windy city, Chicago, the coolest technology announcement so far this week did not come out of CES, but instead from a small Rhode Island company called Towerstream.

Up until now Towerstream has focused on providing broadband to corporations via high-speed line-of-sight Wi-Fi radios placed on skyscrapers. But the company announced this week that it would be building out wireless hot zones in the nation’s densest cities, providing much-needed bandwidth for the smart phones and tablets so many urbanites rely on.

The idea is fairly simple. Towerstream is picking out the busiest places in New York, including Grand Central Terminal and Times Square, strategically placing smart Wi-Fi antennas to blanket the area, and then linking them back wirelessly to the antennas they already have in place on some of New York’s tallest buildings.

via Heads Up, NYC, SF, Chicago: Something Wi-Fi This Way Comes | Epicenter | Wired.com.